A house is one of the greatest things to own in Ultima Online; it is your personal piece of the server to do whatever you wish with, whether it be decorating, macroing in, or loot storage. But one of the key things players always seem to overlook is security. Hopefully this document will shed some light on security tips, and ways you can prevent your goods from ending up in someone else's hands.

1. Public versus PrivateBy default, newly placed houses are private. If your house is public, you can make it private through your house sign menu. Double-click your house sign, choose "Options" and click the button next to "Declare this building to be private." By implementing table barriers, you can essentially keep a portion of your house public, while the rest remains private or "secure." We'll get more into this later.

2. KeysWhen initially placing your house, a key will appear in your backpack. This key will lock the front door as well as any interior doors of your new home. You can make copies of the key to give to friends or co-owners of the house by Double-clicking a blank key and targeting the original (some tinker skill may be required.) Keys are not blessed and can be stolen from your pack; keeping a key and a rune to your house in your pack is a pure invite for house looters.

If you lose your key or its stolen, you can change the house locks and retrieve a new key by Double-clicking the house sign, choose "Options" and click "Change the house locks." A copy of the new key will also be placed in your bank, and any old keys will no longer work.

3. Locking Your DoorsBy default, when you first place a house the front door(s) will be unlocked. To lock your door(s), simply double-click your key, then target your door. On houses that have two front doors, you will need to lock *both* doors (it is possible to have one door locked, and one door unlocked.)

To lock interior doors, double-click your key, then select the interior door. A new key will be generated for the interior door; this way you can micro manage your home, make copies to allow certain people access to certain rooms, or as an additional fail safe to prevent a thief who has breached your first barrier any access from your valuables.

4. Friends and Co-OwnersFriends and co-owners of your house have access to secure and locked down containers. Co-owners can also unlock and lockdown items within your house, they may also move your trash barrel if you implement a table barrier. Friends and co-owners should be trustworthy; you are essentially giving them access to your goods.

5. Hidden Players in your houseHouse owners, co-owners and friends are able to instantly reveal anyone hidden in the house with the Detect Hidden skill, regardless of skill level. Targeting any single location within your home will reveal the hidden player, even if they are outside on the patio, or on the second floor. Whenever you enter your home, the first thing you should do is make sure the doors close behind you, followed by using the Detect Hidden skill. You can either make a macro or this, or open up your skills menu, select the Detect Hidden skill and drag it off your skill menu.

6. BansSo you've found the intruder in your home, now what? Quickly ban them of course! Saying the command "i ban thee" will bring up a target cursor. Select the intruder to be banned and target them, they will quickly be removed from your home and placed outside near the door. Bans are account-based; a ban will not only ban that player, but any subsequent characters he may have on that same account. Bans may be removed by opening your house menu and choose "Friends."

7. Table BarriersTable barriers provide a second level of security to your home in case your house key is stolen or looted. A thief who acquires your house key and knows where you live is guaranteed to pay a visit to your house and see what he can take before you make it back to ban him or rekey the house. Table barriers are created by placing impassible objects side-by-side in rows or columns to separate areas of your home you wish to provide the extra protection. Regular tables work the best, avoid using small items like crates as they can create rez vulnerabilities. A trash barrel is usually used as the entrance, since they can be quickly moved out of the way and back into place. You can place a trash barrel by saying "i wish to place a trash barrel." Due to a recent patch, you will have to destroy the old trash barrel before being able to place a new one.

Basic entry is as follows:

1. Enter your home2. Make sure door shuts behind you3. Use Detect Hidden and target yourself4. Approach the trash barrel and stand directly in front of it5. Double-click an axe or other chopping weapon and target the barrel to destroy it6. Take a step forward to where the trash barrel used to be7. Say "i wish to place a trash barrel"8. Use Detect Hidden and target yourself (doing it twice doesn't hurt!)

To exit, either reverse the above procedure, or simply say "remove thyself" and target yourself.

By implementing table barriers, we can declare our home public, but still keep a portion of the house private. By using a combination of Detect Hidden and quick placement of the trash barrel, we can essentially remove the need to even carry a key around with us since the table barrier is protecting our private areas for us.

The key to table barriers is to always place the impassible items either N, S, W, or E of each other, never diagonal, and connect them to walls in your home. The reasoning behind this is because an intruder can sneak a ghost in past your wall, then have a second character come in and rez the ghost by using the corner. To rez a ghost, the ghost must be within the surrounding 9 tiles of the rezzer; blocking diagonal corners moves the ghost away from the rez zone.

8. Improved Table Barrier SecuritySo now that you understand the basic table barrier concept, lets increase the security it provides a bit further.

Although an intruder cannot get past a table barrier, they still may be able to loot items if they are placed directly on the other side of the barrier. This also applies to characters you might have macroing away within your home; if they are standing directly next to the table barrier, an intruder who has managed to get past the door could kill the macroing character and loot all of his/her belongings from the other side of the table.

To prevent this, we'll take advantage of the Z-axis. If we raise the tables up by using a single item and locking them down, an intruder can no longer loot items on the other side of the table (you can still open corpses or chests next to the wall, but the intruder cannot remove items from them.) They can still loot items placed next to the trash barrel, but at least we've extended the amount of safe storage in our home, especially if we have a small house.

*** Note: It has been brought up that devious players can modify their UO client and still be able to loot/steal items placed near the table barrier, bypassing the Z-axis security. It is recommended to always keep items 1 tile away from the barrier, or 2 tiles away from any spot reachable by an intruder (intruder -> table -> tile -> item) ***

9. Additional Notes1. Always keep a character logged out in your home. If you die in the wilderness and lose your key or have it stolen and the intruder knows where you live (especially if you had a rune to your house with you), you can guarantee that the thief or looter will quickly be visiting your home to see what they can loot. Being able to switch characters and ban any unwanted intruders is a huge plus while you work on changing the house keys or rezzing your character.

2. By keeping the width between the table barrier and front door down to single tiles, you can actually run back and forth along the barrier a few times. If someone is hidden, you'll get the system message about "pushing something invisible aside" which is a clear sign of an intruder. This is great if you're paranoid and need more verification that nobody is in your home.

3. Always double-check to make sure both front doors are locked whenever you change the house locks. It is a good idea to quickly unlock and relock them just to be sure.

10. Frequently Asked QuestionsQuestion: Will Detect Hidden reveal ghosts within your home?Answer: Unfortunately, no. The good news is that if you've implemented your table barrier correctly, there's no way the ghost can be rezzed anyway. If the ghosts logs out while inside your home, they will automatically be placed outside upon login if your house is private or they are not friended/co-owned.

Question: What if the ghost follows me in, and stands on top of when I place the trash barrel?Answer: You cannot resurrect a player who is standing on an object, such as a table or barrel.

Question: This is an excellent post! Do you accept gifts or donations?Answer: Absolutely!

Great post! I would like to nominate this thread for a sticky, and hope a friendly mod/admin make sure it gets it.

There are a few things I would like to add, or see added to the main post though.

Trash Barrel patch. There will soon come a patch including an are-accurate fix that will render the Trash Barrel useless for use of a quick pass through the table barrier. Another way of passing the security barrier should be mentioned. Perhaps a macro binded to a hot-key that automatically removes a table in the table barrier and moving the character 1 step forward to then replace the table again perhaps? An example of such a working macro would be a nice addition.

"Safe" tiles withing a house. Provided that the house is locked up and no one is inside the house, an explanation on which tiles are safe might be a good addition. And perhaps even explaining why those tiles are safe, and how the spells that could perhaps kill you work.

Patio Houses. Patio houses have doors towards the patio that can be opened from outside the house by using magic (if not locked), and could possibly be less secure. Other players might use this as means to reach and attack characters inside these homes.

Vulnerable items. Some items can be destroyed by non-friendly players using magic summons. Now, I dun remember what that'd be, but I think it is non locked down containers or something, either way, an explanation on this is needed even for me. ;)

If your house is private to begin with (and you always have one toon logged out inside), there's really no need to worry about ghosts logged in there, right? Players cannot res from the other side of walls..

_________________

At least change the angle so people can't see where my characters are. Fire/IPBan anyone who plays my characters too plz. KThxBai.

Another thing that should be added about Patio houses is that any non-secure containers located on the outer edge of the patio (near the fence) aren't safe. People standing outside the patio can get to items located inside containers and "steal" them. Even though players may not be able to manually take (drag) items from the containers, doesn't mean that razor can't. A razor restock agent can sometimes reach where the player can't.

This has officially been a warning to all players.If I come across any items laying around in this manner, I will not be the honorable person I usually am and tell the owner about his/her lack in security, but instead take the items.

The Trash Barrel is now officially history.Patch 105 has changed it forever. I suggest making a "release-move-lockdown" macro instead for your new "no-trash barrel security barrier". This is what my macro looks like to enter the "all-table security barrier" (I use remove thyself and target myself to exit from within the security barrier):

I have this binded to a hot key for quick entering, and manually use detect hidden before and after using the macro.

Another thing that should be noted about making houses public, is that one can't get interior door keys while having a public house. One has to use the house key on the interior doors while the building is private to get them. And only after that make the house public. The house key is removed when making the building public and once can thus not use the non-existent house key on the interior doors to get those keys. So get the interior door keys before making the house public.

Great post! I would like to nominate this thread for a sticky, and hope a friendly mod/admin make sure it gets it.

There are a few things I would like to add, or see added to the main post though.

[*] "Safe" tiles withing a house. Provided that the house is locked up and no one is inside the house, an explanation on which tiles are safe might be a good addition. And perhaps even explaining why those tiles are safe, and how the spells that could perhaps kill you work.[/list]

I'd definitely like to know more about this. Our "guild" (there's two of us, we're saving up for a stone, but we have a house) has been getting attacked inside our house by some jackass that keeps griefing us. How do we prevent this from happening, are there "safe tiles" on the smallest house size? If there aren't, then what's the point?

I was thinking of another method of home security and wonder if there are any flaws.

Basically completely wall off a 'strong room' where you have all your loot chests. This area is totally blocked off and whatever is blocking it off is locked down, never to be unlocked.

On one side of the tables is an alt (who really needs 15 characters?) who is there to act solely as a banker. He receives all new loot and stashes it, and retrieves anything your other characters need and trades them over the barrier.

That way you never have to breach your barrier and nothing can ever sneak through.

Of course this is all theory. I've not actually tried it myself. Does it sound plausible?

Great post! I would like to nominate this thread for a sticky, and hope a friendly mod/admin make sure it gets it.

There are a few things I would like to add, or see added to the main post though.

[*] "Safe" tiles withing a house. Provided that the house is locked up and no one is inside the house, an explanation on which tiles are safe might be a good addition. And perhaps even explaining why those tiles are safe, and how the spells that could perhaps kill you work.[/list]

I'd definitely like to know more about this. Our "guild" (there's two of us, we're saving up for a stone, but we have a house) has been getting attacked inside our house by some jackass that keeps griefing us. How do we prevent this from happening, are there "safe tiles" on the smallest house size? If there aren't, then what's the point?

For macroing, the only safe place is to be dead center within your house. The safe tiles pictured above are tiles that cannot be normally reached by an intruder, although they may still be able to view your items. They don't mean you're physically safe from damage or death, it just means that if someone were to loot your key and make it back to your house before you do, items on these locations wouldn't be lootable by normal means.

_________________"I consider most of you NPC's that inhabit the single player game that I am here to enjoy." - MatronDeWinter

I was thinking of another method of home security and wonder if there are any flaws.

Basically completely wall off a 'strong room' where you have all your loot chests. This area is totally blocked off and whatever is blocking it off is locked down, never to be unlocked.

On one side of the tables is an alt (who really needs 15 characters?) who is there to act solely as a banker. He receives all new loot and stashes it, and retrieves anything your other characters need and trades them over the barrier.

That way you never have to breach your barrier and nothing can ever sneak through.

Of course this is all theory. I've not actually tried it myself. Does it sound plausible?

While plausible, it sounds completely unnecessary and more work than really required for efficient safety. If you own a house this large, you more than likely have the ability to have separate locks for doors, and plenty of room to create multiple table barriers if you're that paranoid.

To go off of what you implied, I think it would be easier just to buy a large patio, create a lock for the outside door on the patio, create your permanent table barrier behind it, and have your "banker" character stand behind the standard table row inside a large patio. Detect hidden to make sure the area is clear, then trade across the table.

_________________"I consider most of you NPC's that inhabit the single player game that I am here to enjoy." - MatronDeWinter

I was thinking of another method of home security and wonder if there are any flaws.

Basically completely wall off a 'strong room' where you have all your loot chests. This area is totally blocked off and whatever is blocking it off is locked down, never to be unlocked.

On one side of the tables is an alt (who really needs 15 characters?) who is there to act solely as a banker. He receives all new loot and stashes it, and retrieves anything your other characters need and trades them over the barrier.

That way you never have to breach your barrier and nothing can ever sneak through.

Of course this is all theory. I've not actually tried it myself. Does it sound plausible?

Why not just use detect hidden before unlocking/relocking the table?

Detect hidden is 100% in your house....

_________________<Derrick> I guarantee world peace will not be seeded in a UO FreeShard IRC channel

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